An Evening With the Ichijoujis
by Ukulele
Summary: Ken Ichijouji knows that mind games are always more fun with two players, especially when you're making up the rules as you go along. What he doesn't yet know is that you can't win all of the time.
1. Default Chapter

**An Evening With the Ichijoujis**

**Author's Note:** Mild daftness ahead. I hope that won't diminish anyone's enjoyment of the story but, if you're prone to take the series to seriously, then this plot may not be your cup of tea.   
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the rights to Digimon. 

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The feeling of being unconsious is a lot less fuss than most people would have you believe. You don't even realise you're doing it most of the time, for a start. On the rare occasion that you do have some form of awareness, it's of an extremely pleasant vacancy. Like sitting in your room with your eyes shut, the door locked, with nothing to do and nothing to think about ever again. It's perfect. 

It's the waking up that's the catch. The feeling of your body, resenting whatever abuse you gave it to incur a loss of consiousness, booting back up. Of each of your senses slowly switching on, one by one. This was made even more unpleasant to Davis by the fact that with each new sense came new feeling of fresh unpleasantness. 

Is that dirt I can taste? Yep, dirt. Why does my shoulder hurt? What the hell am I lying on? Whatever the hell it is, it's bleeding _cold_. 

He was so confused by these new, unpleasant sensations that he forewent the usual ritual of the newly consious that involves lying very still with your eyes shut and feebly proclaiming that you're dying. Instead he sat up. 

"Erk!" 

The scream came from both him and the Veggiemon simultaneously. Davis shrieked because Veggiemon aren't the nicest of visions to wake up to, looking like a particularly evil breed of melon, as they do. The Veggiemon shrieked because Davis had narrowly missed head-butting him in his sudden return to the land of the living. 

They screeched again several times, both in unison and individually, due to Davis realising at various points that the Digimon's dry, sinuous tentacles were wound around his ankles, that thay were in a very dark, cavernous room, that the comforting weight of the digivice in his front pocket was absent and that they weren't alone. The Veggiemon screamed because, hey, Veggiemon aren't really that bright. 

"Is this going to go on much longer?" Inquired a dry voice from behind him. "Not a bad act for a comedy duo, but it's wearing a little thin."  
  
"Aw, damn." Davis swiveled around as best he could to scowl at his nemesis. For a moment he was presented with the genuinely disconcerting vision the Emperor's head, floating as if by itself amongst a mass of shadowed objects against the far wall of the dark room. Then, to his relief, his vision cleared enough to pick out the back of a ridiculously over dramatic throne, over which his captor was sat and peering over the back off. "I got captured? How? What?"  
  
"Disappointingly easy, actually." He said in a tone that was half boredom, half smugness. "You should be embarrassed."  
  
"Where's Veemon? If he's so much as _smelled_ one of your stupid rings, you're going to regret it." He gave the Veggiemon a half-hearted kick, more out of spite than anything.   
  
"Oh please," The Emperor sneered, irritated that his new captive had already started interrupting him with such pointless questions. He was slightly upset by the fact that Davis seemed as _corpus mentis_ as he ever did. He'd gleefully anticipated a good half hour of verbally tormenting what he assumed would be a complete invalid. "He's happily frolicking in the forest for all I care. You think I'd bring that walking time-bomb here with me? What do you think I am?"  
  
"I think you're a loon!"   
  
"You only need one for a ransom," The Emperor continued levelly, tipping his glasses so he could give Davis a proper grin.  
  
"Aw, crap." Davis groaned. Way to go and drag down the team again, Davis. Great leadership, as usual. Still, putting on a brave face he snorted derisively. "You do realise that they won't take a single order from you? They'll just come down here and beat your stupid head in, instead. All of them."   
  
The team may have had their ups and downs but he didn't doubt his faith in them for a moment. Plus, now he knew that Veemon was safe elsewhere he didn't have anything to be scared about at all. The Emperor couldn't do anything to his friends and, if the Emperor tried hurting him, he'd get back double when the rest of the gang tracked them down. He felt his own courage swelling up in his chest and squashing the little fear that had been lurking in his lungs.  
  
"Well, that was the plan." The Emperor looked a little downcast.   
  
"Was?"  
  
The was a small, embarrassed pause.  
  
"You've been out for hours, you know?" The Emperor exclaimed defensively into the silence. "I had some great ideas, you know, but..."  
  
"But?"  
  
"It's getting on for six thirty. My mother wants me home for dinner."  
  
"You've got to go in for your _dinner?_"  
  
"She sends out an police crack team if I'm not there." He explained without embarrassment. "She's getting suspicious about my non-appearance around the house already."  
  
"You're not the evil dictator I thought you were," Davis exclaimed with mock disappointment.  
  
"Rest assured, if I actually cared what you thought, I wouldn't be telling you this." The Emperor sneered. "But it does raise the question of what to do with you. I'd just gag you and chuck you in a dungeon somewhere but I really wouldn't want to leave you unsupervised. Especially as I expect the rest of the Goonies to find a way to track you down against the odds." He tapped his chin thoughtfully with the hilt of his whip. "What to do, what to do, what to _do_..."  
  
"You could let me go?"  
  
"I was thinking aloud, not asking you."   
  
Davis gave a theatrical sigh, and propped his chin on his arm. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Emperor's own Digimon, Wormmon, watching the two of them with concern. It had crept stealthily across the floor while it's master was distracted and was now peering at him from beneath the Emperor's chair with fearful eyes. Weather it looked more worried for the captor or the captee was debatable.  
  
"I know," The Emperor dragged Davis's attention back and his face broke into a wide, calculating smile that showed the faults in the set of his teeth.   
  
"About time,"  
  
"Would you like to come to my house for dinner?"  
  
"You what?!" Davis screeched, lost for better words. All of the sarcastic rebuttals he had prepared fell flat. "Why?"  
  
"A simple solution to both my problems. Your loud, boisterous presence should surely convince my mother that I am happily pursuing social endeavors in my spare time rather than whatever grim, motherly suspicions she may have, and I don't have to compromise my security by leaving you here." The smile widened fractionally. "I want you on best behavior, mind."   
  
"Whatever this is, I ain't buying." Davis snorted. "How dumb do you think I am? This is a lame ... whatsit!" he gestured wildly. "You know,"  
  
"False sense of security?" The Emperor offered.  
  
"That's the one!"  
  
"Oh, dear, you're _stupid_." The Emperor said, with genuine pity. "You were out cold for three hours. If I wanted to get the drop on you, you'd already know about it. why would I have to coax you into anything?"  
  
"Personal satisfaction?"  
  
The Emperor raised an eyebrow.  
  
"Could be." Davis said quietly. "But still, dude, you captured me! I've seen enough movies to know what lameo over-dramatic, egotistical villains do and, I'll give you a hint, it doesn't involve tea and biscuits."  
  
"I don't watch movies."   
  
"I don't play mindgames."  
  
"I'm already late," He said, smiling with seeming genuine amusement. "You _are_ coming."  
  
"Make me." Davis grunted. Being gagged in a dungeon somewhere was probably a more secure future than whatever bizarreness the Emperor had up his sleeve.  
  
"How tiresome. You have noticed your Digivice is missing, haven't you?" He turned fully in his throne and gave Davis a hard look over the chairback.  
  
"You're just full of blackmail today, aren't you? 

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Seeing the conversion from Emperor, whip wielding dictator, to Ken Ichijouji, model genius, was startling visually only. As the familiar sensation of being dissolved as once of the Emperor's monitors spewed bright light and sucked them in overtook him, he was stood with a shock-haired, lunatic dressed in the kind of get up that evn David Bowie would put back on the shelf. The next minute, once he'd picked himself up from Ken's bedroom carpet and disentangled himself from a lamp cable, he was with lank haired boy his own age dressed entirely in shades of grey. 

However, even seeing him dressed in his school uniform in the setting of one of one of the most normal, boring bedrooms on the planet, minus his thematics, his slaves and his technology he didn't become any the less threatening. Davis hadn't really seen him properly without his dictator get-up since the day of the football match and he'd quite forgotten that Ichijouji had extremely creepy eyes. 

He got up and dusted himself off, even though Ken's carpet was so frighteningly clean and immaculate that the only dust in the room would have had to have come in with him. Ken appeared to have somehow arrived standing, which was an impressive trick in itself. 

"My mother should still be out, but I need to check. If not we'll have to sneak out of the window and walk round to the front." Ken opened his door a fraction and peered out, listening intently. "All clear." 

"Jesus." Ken turned around to find, with some horror, that Davis was gamely pulling the drawers of his desk open and rifling the contents. "Your room's so _organised_. Woah, you've got a drawer just for pencils?!" 

He would have explored further but he suddenly found himself pulled back and gripped in what he suspected were the beginnings of an extremely unpleasant judo maneuver. 

"They were all sharpened, too. That's _disgusting_." 

"Don't touch anything." Ken ground out, staring Davis hard in the eyes. "I mean that." 

"But, seriously-" 

"You do want to see your personal Muppet friend again, don't you?" Ken's face adopted a highly unpleasant grin. 

"Fine, fine. Your wish is my command." 

"Good." Ken shut his desk with a bang. "Now, prepare to become the _perfect_ guest." 

**To be continued**

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AN: Thanks for reading. 


	2. Chapter 2

**An Evening With the Ichijoujis: Chapter 2  
Author's Note:** Thanks for the reviews, especially Cynthia, who was kind enough to point out my continuity errors for me. I'm embarrassed to admit I hadn't realised at all, and as I haven't had a chance to rewatch the series (despite the massive delay between chapters), I imagine there'll be plenty more where the last ones came from. I hope you can turn a blind eye to them. Thanks as well to everyone who spurned me to write a second chapter with interesting comments, compliments and...pokings. Thanks!  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the rights to Digimon.  
  
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The Ichijouji household was...depressing. Davis was lead out of Ken's drab, tidy bedroom into an equally drab, tidy hall leading into a drab, tidy living room. All of the doors were shut. Seriously, Davis thought, who actually shuts doors behind them? The few pictures on the walls seemed to have been hung with mathematical precision. The ornaments appeared to have been arranged with the same kind of geometric fanaticism.  
  
It was unnerving to think that while the so-called 'digital' world could be so chaotic, the natural one could so precise. So boring. So soulless. Davis was actually beginning to feel more unnerved by this happy family household than the giant, floating fortress he had just left.  
  
He sat on the sofa as indicated, noticing that it had about the same comfort value as a piece of concrete, cowed into an awkward and unnatural silence.   
  
"Sit, stay. _Touch nothing_." Ken ordered as he disappeared into another doorway, presumably a kitchen. Davis did as he was told and took the opportunity to examine the room about him. Bookshelf. Thick books - probably not just for show or full of Reader's Digests like the ones in his house. Newspaper rack, full of clinically folded newspapers. Wastepaper bin, empty. Plant on window sill, not dead but going that way. Davis was beginning to feel oppressed.   
  
On the walls, amongst the numerous framed award certificates were family photos. Davis looked with interest at the short, flustered looking woman and tall, anxious looking man that must be Ken's parents. It hadn't really dawned on him until now that the kid even had any parents at all. He couldn't imagine a more normal looking couple as the pair in those photos, smiling at the camera, posing outside some landmark, stood on a sunny beach. How in the world had they managed to produce such a monumental screw-up? Then again, Davis thought, spotting a school photograph of Ken smiling angelically, the camera certainly _could_ lie despite the old saying.   
  
He spotted another snap, this one of the whole family. Mum and Dad bore their usual proud expressions, looking somewhat younger than in the other photos. Clinging onto Mum's arm was a scrawny little boy with short, dark hair, grinning like an idiot and waving at the camera. Jesus, was that Ken? Davis smirked, wondering wheather he should compliment the Emperor on his baby snaps when he returned. The smirk faded as he noticed a fourth figure, stood next to Dad with spiky hair and what was unmistakably the Emperor's smug smile on his features. _That_ was Ken, surely. But when had Ken worn glasses? And who was the other kid, then? He'd almost gotten up to see if he could spot a date on the photo when Ken's voice made him jump.  
  
"My mother's running late, she's left a note." Ken reappeared bearing a tray laden with cups and saucers and a plate of biscuits. "About fifteen minutes."  
  
"Oh." Davis nodded, taking the closest cup and examining the tea within with a suspicious eye. He noticed that the handle had a crack in it, which would probably qualify as anarchy in this little house. "I didn't touch anything, if you're wondering."  
  
"I didn't say you had."  
  
"You were _thinking_ it." Davis took a sip of his tea, choked and regurgitated it noisily back into it's cup. "Jesus Christ! Where'd you keep the sugar?" After a life of drinking tea that was almost half it's weight in sugar, the taste of the actual beverage was acutely unpleasant.  
  
"In the kitchen, where it's staying."  
  
"But I can't drink tea without it!"  
  
"Good. It doesn't bother me weather you drink it or not." Ken shrugged. "So long as it looks to my mother like I'm taking care of you, it doesn't really matter."  
  
"Git."  
  
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Mrs ichijouji didn't count multi-tasking amongst her skills, so it wasn't unusual that she had to pause outside her own front door as she tried to juggle three shopping bags, find which of her pockets held her keys, extract said keys from the bus tickets and tissues that lined her pockets as well as the mindlessly cheerful keyrings attached to them and unlock her door.  
  
This time, however, she had paused with the keys themselves in the lock to stare worriedly at the door. It almost sounded as if voices coming from behind it, as if in conversation. She expected Ken to be home, but her husband should have only just finished work by now. Something must be wrong if he'd come home early. Then again, something must be up if the two of them were having a discussion at all. As Ken had become more sullen and withdrawn over the past few months the relationship between her husband and son, never particularly comfortable at the best of times, had become downright tense. Aside from the ritualistic "How was your day" type questions, their discourse, although tersely polite, was restricted to necessities only.  
  
Troubled, she hurried to unlock the door, inserting a rabbit-shaped keyring into the keyhole in her haste. When she finally managed to enter her own home, she was greeted with bizarre sight, or rather, absence of a sight. Her husband's coat and shoes were not in their expected places on the racks in the entry way. Perturbed, she hurried through the kitchen without pausing to put down her shopping...and smiled.  
  
Ken was sat in the living room, a room he seemed to avoid these days, with a cup of tea in his hands. Across from him was another boy her son's age, looking at her with an awkward smile from behind his own teacup. Ken had brought a friend home! He'd _never_ done that.  
  
"Ken?"   
  
"Mother, this is Davis." Ken rose and indicated the boy with a wave of his teacup. The boy, Davis, mimicked Ken's actions and stood up to greet her, with an expression of repressed horror she took as shyness on his honest face. "I might have mentioned him."  
  
"Davis." Mrs Ichijouji nodded, not pausing in her surprise to think weather he actually had or not. "It's so nice to see you. I...er..."  
  
"I met him at football practice," Ken promted.  
  
"Oh, of course." Mrs Ichijouji had now freed a hand from her shopping bags and had gripped Davis's warmly. He was slightly unnerved by the honest gratitude in her her expression. "It's good to get to meet one of your friends for a change, Ken." She relinquished his hand and looked at him appraisingly. "You will stay for tea, won't you Davis?"  
  
"Um," Davis glanced at Ken, who nodded. "If that's alright with you, Mrs Ichijouji."  
  
"Of course, of course!" She beamed, retreating back into the kitchen with her shopping, the door swinging shut behind her.  
  
As she unpacked her shopping into the pantry she reflected on how good it was to have a _nice_ surprise to come home to for a change. Things couldn't be as bad as she sometimes thought if Ken was willing to bring his friends home. Davis himself was another surprise. He was exactly what she wouldn't expect Ken's friends to be like, in fact he looked exactly the opposite of Ken himself. His hair was short and messy, his clothes were unkempt and casual. And those goggles - really, what would kids come up with next? Had she not been introduced to him by Ken, she might have dismissed him as a trouble maker. After seeing his awkward manner and shy smile, however, she was certain that he was a very nice boy, indeed.  
  
She felt a little embarrassed to admit to herself that she had become worried about Ken's recent behavior. There she was, thinking he was drawing into himself more then ever, when all the time he'd been out doing the very opposite. Perhaps things were looking up.  
  
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"Woah." Davis hissed to host as he listened to Mrs Ichijouji hum and bustle about her kitchen. "Your Mum's _nice_. Were you adopted, or what?!"  
  
"I sometimes wonder." Ken smiled wryly at the kitchen door for a brief instant, and then turned back to Davis with his usual grim expression. "Now, you do remember everything?"  
  
"Yeah, yeah. Best behavior." He repeated sullenly, feeling, if possible, more uncomfortable than he looked. He wasn't used to being embarrassed to meet people. Usually, he only needed a brief introduction to someone's parents and it was like he was part of the family. He never bothered to watch what he said or did, because it didn't matter. He didn't hide his personality. He didn't pretend to be someone else. He was Davis, and people liked him.  
  
What was he supposed to do here, though? How could he make small talk with this woman, who had greeted him with such relief and gratitude, without revealing that his dearest wish was to punch her darling son's face in? He looked at Ken, who was staring intensely at him, and wondered why his mother didn't want to do the same. How could she ignore the patronising tone in which her own son spoke to her? It seemed bizarre. But there was something a little more troubling than that.  
  
He scowled and shifted his gaze from Ken to focus on his foul tea. Why was this happening? The situation was absolutely bizarre to begin with. Being taken home by your worst enemy for dinner with their parents? Perhaps he would have bought Ken's reasons before, but not now.  
  
In those few short sentences Ken had revealed that he did not care what his mother thought of him. She was scared of him. She was frightened of her own son and he knew it. He had never and could never care what she thought because, as far as he was concerned, she had no power at all. He couldn't help thinking that Mr Ichijouji, the stout, troubled man in the photographs, wouldn't be any different. The idea of Ken going out of his way to appease these people's worries was downright ludicrous.   
  
He glanced up into Ken's piercing stare and felt more certain than ever. There was something else going on here.  
  
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AN: Thanks for reading. 


	3. Chapter 3

Apologies, again, for the delay. During that time I've taken the opportunity to develop my ideas for this story and I've shifted my original plans a little. Obviously, this doesn't make much difference to anyone but me, except that the main summary is now a bit of a red herring. Ah, well.  
  
Thanks, again, for the feedback, especially that from Four String Bard. I'm genuinely humbled.   
  
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**An Evening With the Ichijoujis: Chapter 3**

He found himself amused that even the Ichijoujis had their dining rituals. Everyone clearly had their own designated placemats, for example. Mrs Ichijouji was a woman to whom small things, like placemats and cushions, mattered deeply. She gave Davis a long, hard look, as if assessing some unknown criteria, before selecting a placemat from a pile of assorted twee designs. He was perturbed to discover that Mrs Ichijouji had seemed to find some quality within him that made a tableau of grinning cats seem fitting.  
  
Food was served out, seats were taken. Davis found himself shepherded into the chair opposite from Ken, with the two parents on either side of him. Davis sat obediently, all thoughts of suspicion out-prioritised at by the prospect of a free dinner. It was a meal sadly lacking on the _junk_ scale and dangerously encumbered with vegetables, most of which seemed to have been carefully stripped of both taste and nutrients by boiling.  
  
Still, there wasn't much in the world that could prevent Davis from enjoying food. The many years of eating in front of the TV had allowed him to develop a mechanical, one handed shovelling motion that left one arm free to fiddle with the remote control and so forth, whilst still eating at maximum efficiency. Even in his current company, it was only after five minutes of contented shovelling that he noticed that the eyes of all three Ichijoujis were fixed upon him.  
  
"It's good!" He offered, as if in explanation. Mrs Ichijouji smiled, although still looked rather disapproving of his poor manners.  
  
He realised that the plates of his hosts were practically untouched. Well, perhaps _untouched_ wasn't the right word. Food was certainly being moved about, from one side of the plate to the other perhaps, or cut into smaller pieces, or formed into a pile that was then dismantled, but not much actual eating was taking place. It was like an exercise in trying to look like you were eating without actually consuming anything. Occasionally a small amount of food was transfered to the mouth where it was duly and ponderously processed, but he felt that was more for the keeping up of appearances than anything.  
  
Uncomfortable silence reigned over the table. Davis forced himself to slow down his shovelling pace, realising that the sooner he finished, the sooner he would have no excuse not to talk. For once he really did not want to. To either side of him he could practically hear the senior Ichijoujis racking their brains for something to say. Davis was far from perceptive, but even he could read Ken's parents like books. In that respect they were like a two part volume with about five pages each. They had clearly not had a guest witness this spectacle for a long, long time and wanted, desperately, to present themselves as a family. It seemed that any topic of conversation which would require their son's participation would reveal that there hadn't been a family, in the true sense of the word, sat at this table for a long time. Denied their usual forced parental banter, the three of them said nothing.  
  
Mr Ichijouji was the best. Perhaps it was an indication that he was most at loss for what to say or do, but his system to avoid eating was complex to a point that it bordered on hypnotising. There was clearly a pattern to the way he systematically rearranged the food on his plate, possibly based on colour or shape, but Davis did not a have the mathematical mind to work it out. Every now and then Davis got the feeling that he was _just about_ to take the plunge and say something, but then would seem to change his mind, and simply cough or adjust his glasses.  
  
Mrs Ichijouji was a motherly sort of woman, and since Davis was the kind of scruffy, cheery sort of boy that naturally brings out the parent in anyone over a certain age, she was clearly dying to mother him. She was having to keep an iron restraint on the near unstoppable urge to ask someone, anyone, how their day had gone, or if anyone had any plans for tomorrow or something else comfortingly normal, or ask Davis about his school or where he lived. She found herself not daring to question Ken's friend, however. It was mercy enough that he was there to begin with.  
  
Only Ken was unreadable. He sat at the far end of the table, dully stirring the contents of his plate with an unreadable expression plastered on his features, as much a stranger as Davis was. To his mother he allowed the occasional glance, although Davis wasn't observant enough to perceive the delicate variations in Ken's general expression of contempt to discern any meaning from them. His father was ignored completely. It was as if he'd somehow leeched all of the confidence and charisma out of his parents  
  
The silence howled on. Davis was a man of action, not a man of thought. He didn't sit around considering, he just _did_. he didn't think, he just _said_. Denied the freedom to either say anything or do anything in the stifling silence of this dead family dinner, he felt like a prisoner inside his own head. Perhaps, he thought, he'd been brought here just for this reason. It was like a more efficient variation of the Chinese _Dripping Tap_ torture, where the brain and spirit simply gave up and died.  
  
Mr Ichijouji cleared his throat noisily and all eyes immediately darted towards him. For a fleeting second Davis was certain he was going to try and break the silence, and mentally cheered him on. Sadly, Mr Ichijouji struggled for a second and then retreated to the safe position of toying with his carrots, a false alarm.  
  
Davis found his mind working at the only object of any interest in the room, his captor. He didn't really want to try and work out the Ken/Emperor puzzle, it really didn't matter to him, but his mind was struggling to fill in the void. If there was a reason behind Ken's problems, then he really didn't care what they were. The important thing, he thought, was to simply stop him from following his current overly-dramatic, badly-dressed evil-overlord course. After that everything would simply work itself out.  
  
As far as Davis was concerned people, unlike Digimon, don't come neatly categorised as 'good' or 'bad', or 'vaccine' or 'virus'; they have a bit of both, and if you can just get them to see right, you could bring out the bit you wanted. It wasn't hard. They didn't even have to like you.  
  
But now he found himself wondering about the Emperor. Both of Ken's public personas, the perfect genius and the raving lunatic, had seemed equally fake to him. It was as if Ken had been trying too separate his 'good' and his 'bad' into two separate people in two separate worlds and be both at the same time. It wasn't really a case of trying to find sort out the bad from the good, but more to do with finding him some middle ground where he could be happy. At the moment it seemed more like he'd been creating fake ideals of himself and trying them out for size, trying to find which one fit the most. It now seemed like he'd made his choice.  
  
The Ken of the television interviews and the academic awards had been charming audiences of viewers for years. Even the Ken he had met a while ago at the football match had seemed admirable and fun, despite his overwhelming competitiveness and smugness. On the other hand, the thing sat opposite him, arranging his peas into concentric circles and drowning them in tomato sauce, practically _was_ the Emperor. Even hiding behind a drab school uniform, mind-numbingly normal family and expression of terminal boredom wasn't enough disguise it.   
  
He was also sure that this must have been a recent thing and that at some point in the not-to-distant past Mr and Mrs Ichijouji would have sat down at dinner with their son rather than a stranger, or something would have given already. _Something_ good must have happened in this kitchen at some point in order to keep the Ichijoujis going through the motions of a family dinner day after day. The slip of Ken's good act in favour of his bad act must have been pretty gradual. How long would it be be before the he gave the good act up completely and the real world with it?  
  
Then Davis realised with utter conviction that Ken _was_ leaving. Perhaps today, even. Perhaps that's why he'd been dragged along, as if Ken wanted a witness to his last meal with his family before he shed them completely. If this was a farewell diner then the fates had not gone to any particular effort to make it seem significant, however. The kitchen was drab and boring, filled with little kitchen ornaments and uncomfortable furniture. The conversation, or lack of it, was overwhelmingly stifling. The lone shaft of light that fell through the kitchen window illuminated, of all things, a cockerel shaped salt pot. Even the food wasn't particularly interesting, although Davis's fine culinary mind and cultured palette usually registered most things remotely edible as 'great'.  
  
This must have been one of many, many identical dinners in this sad, lifeless little household. The only difference that Davis could imagine was that for once, the forth seat at the table was occupied.  
  
And what on Earth, Davis wondered to himself, was the significance of that? Then he sighed. Evil geniuses. Who can understand 'em?   
  
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Thanks for reading.


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